How to Hide a Column in JTable

In this tutorial, we are going to see how to hide a column in JTable. JTable is a flexible Swing component that is very well suited to display data in a tabular format. In this tutorial, you will learn some techniques to hide a column in a JTable or to make a column in a JTable invisible.

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In the example below, we have three columns “Name, address, ID”, and we have hidden the last column “ID”. In the console we print the hidden data using TableModel.
 

 

Method 1 :

You can use removeColumn() method.
 
Syntax:

removeColumn(TableColumn tcol)

This method is used to delete a column from JTable. It takes a TableColumn object that represents all attributes of a column in a JTable. tcol: It indicates the TableColumn that will be deleted.
 
Example:

//remove the second column
table.removeColumn(table.getColumnModel().getColumn(1));

To get data from the model:

table.getModel().getValueAt(table.getSelectedRow(),1);

One thing to note is, when retrieving data, it must be extracted from the model and not from the table.
 
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Method 2 :

You can set the column width to 0, so that it is invisible, for this we will use the following methods.

• setMinWidth()
• setMaxWidth()
• setWidth()

Example:

table.getColumnModel().getColumn(4).setMinWidth(0);
table.getColumnModel().getColumn(4).setMaxWidth(0);
table.getColumnModel().getColumn(4).setWidth(0);

 

Method 3 :

To hide a column (or more) in a JTable, do not give the column name. To get the hidden data, you must use the TableModel.
 
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Example:

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
import javax.swing.table.*;
import javax.swing.event.*;
import java.awt.event.*;


public class HideColumnJTable implements ListSelectionListener 
{
  JTable table;
    
  public HideColumnJTable() 
  {
    JFrame f = new JFrame("Hide a column from JTable");

    // We only specify 2 columns, the last "ID" is hidden
    String[] columns = new String[] {
          "Name", 
          "Address", 
    };

    Object[][] data = new Object[][] {
          {"Thomas", "Alaska", 1 },
          {"Jean", "Arizona", 2 },
          {"Yohan", "California", 3 },
          {"Emily", "Florida", 4 },
          {"Alex", "Boston", 5 },
    };
    
    TableModel model = new AbstractTableModel() 
    {
      public int getColumnCount() { 
        return columns.length; 
      }
      
      public int getRowCount() { 
        return data.length;
      }
      
      public Object getValueAt(int row, int col) {
        return data[row][col];
      }
      
      public String getColumnName(int column) {
        return columns[column];
      }
      
      public Class getColumnClass(int col) {
        return getValueAt(0,col).getClass();
      }
      
      public void setValueAt(Object aValue, int row, int column) {
        data[row][column] = aValue;
      }
    };

    table = new JTable(model);

    ListSelectionModel listModel = table.getSelectionModel();
    listModel.setSelectionMode(ListSelectionModel.SINGLE_SELECTION);
    listModel.addListSelectionListener(this);

    JScrollPane scroll = new JScrollPane(table);
    scroll.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(300, 300));
    f.getContentPane().add(scroll);
    f.setSize(200, 180);
    f.setVisible(true);
  }

  public void valueChanged(ListSelectionEvent e) {
    int[] sel;
    Object value;

    if (!e.getValueIsAdjusting()) 
    {
      sel = table.getSelectedRows();

      if (sel.length > 0) 
      {
        for (int i=0; i < 3; i++) {
          // get data from the table
          TableModel tm = table.getModel();
          value = tm.getValueAt(sel[0],i);
          System.out.print(value + " ");
        }
        System.out.println();
      }
    }
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    new HideColumnJTable();
  }
}

Output:

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